


method of kindness

by heartbreakage



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Shin Ankoku Ryuu to Hikari no Ken | Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon, Fire Emblem: Shin Monshou no Nazo | Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem
Genre: Introspection, Moral Ambiguity, Reflection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-11
Updated: 2020-11-11
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:20:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27512209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartbreakage/pseuds/heartbreakage
Summary: marth has never particularly liked children.
Kudos: 13





	method of kindness

**Author's Note:**

> using shadow dragon marth as a foundation in particular, i think it's very interesting to explore how a more cynical, realistic mind can motivate marth to do what he does. tiki is hmmm,, an interesting subject to explore

Marth has never had a particular liking for children.

There was a certain fondness, yes, as could be said for many adults who casted a protective eye over their innocence and bright, unhampered smiles to great effect, but his own came to a degree that was neither exceptional nor personal. This rang true even for the prominent charge that has found herself under his wing, time and time again, then now during the peacetime with a newfound permanence.

Tiki, offspring of the divine warrior king. A daughter of dragons, maybe even an honorary daughter of his, as a little girl in flesh and mind who could expand beyond her form to attain might beyond comprehension. Draconic strength that surpassed by a hundredfold the likes of anything Marth, or even the strongest men he knew, could ever muster. 

But it's hard to picture it, sometimes.

Now she tromps through the meadow with all the grace of newborn elephant finding its legs as she chases a butterfly, before shooting her hands out with blinding speed. Clapping her hands around empty air. Or so Marth thought. The reflexes of a manakete child are far greater than their human counterparts and when she slowly fans out her closed fingers like a flower to the sun, he sees the wriggling thing untouched from any semblance of crushing pressure.

He has the restraint to keep his expression only mildly surprised. 

“Mar-Mar, look what I caught! Can I keep it? Oh.. It’s so pretty! Please tell me I can keep it..!”

He speaks with a paternal patience, a measured slowness he only ever reserves for those of her age. “I imagine that it isn’t a good idea, Tiki. Ask yourself; can you provide for it? Feed it and nurture it in the same ways that it can do for itself out here? If not, then you’ll have your answer.”

The voice of reason, to a child, surely impedes more than it helps, and the dragonling pouts but otherwise lets the butterfly lift itself into the air where it flutters free from a cage more dangerous than it could ever know. “Meanie Mar-Mar. You’re no fun at all.. You and Ban-Ban are always the same..!”

The comment is enough to draw an easy smile, and he's on the verge of a remark when footsteps clambering up the incline of the hillock seal his lips. The prince's fingers land on his blade by instinct, an age-old practice frayed at its edges for all the times he has done so, but then they flutter back down innocently to his side.

The white head of an old woman appears in plain sight. A civilian, he presumes, on a walk through the verdant fields just beyond the castle town.

“My, my! What a charming father and daughter duo! ” She utters upon sighting the two, squinting with eyes that will soon totally fail her, which Marth knows because she does not make a comment of this ‘human’ child’s long, tapered ears or the fact that Marth cannot be old enough to father a child whose appearance numbers at approximately ten years old.

"Good afternoon, madam, it's a fine day for a stroll, isn't it?" He greets amiably, kind to children but kinder to the elderly. The demographic he has seen most unable to protect themselves throughout his wars, scattering the streets of the capital in old, emaciated bodies. 

The elderly woman nods, her hand quivers over the knob of her walking stick and when she casts her single hooded eye over him with greater focus, says in a voice that sounds far away, with a nostalgic warmth as if she were speaking to her own blood.

“..I had a son who was quite like you, young man. His little firstborn was the apple of his eye. You two remind me much of them. Nothing warms the heart greater than the sight of a father who loves his child more than anything in the world.”

A little ways ahead, Tiki sees the stranger and trots to his side. Hiding herself bashfully in his shadow, clutching the long drapes of his tunic like a stuffed animal meant to ward away her night terrors. A part of Marth could chuckle at how the divine dragon princess could be beholden to so much duality. A normal little girl at times; a kin-slayer at others melting the hide of her brethren with white-flames hotter than the fires that molded obsidian. 

Marth only smiles at the woman, politely at first and nothing else, because something in his mind pulls and tugs with the weary, aged awareness that it is not exactly that. 

There existed only two people in the world who could slay Medeus. He as Anri’s descendent and Tiki as the divine dragon princess, and by that worldly design it demands a particular exaction of care and kindness that he has always shown for others, but must particularly do for her.

If he wins this child’s favor, she’ll have every reason to be close at hand. Not whisked away to bounds unknown when the Shadow Dragon’s breath of calamity douses over the land anew and torrefies everything to an untimely end.

He could not have won his first war without her, either. The methodology to a natural but well-purposed kindness allows for two tosses of his killing stone. Securing a future for a young girl who deserves better, and a ‘better’ that can only come about for all his people by her **power.**

For all their years to be, long to a human and short to the dragonkin, that they’ll spend together throughout his lifetime, he knows she’ll always be of the mind that he loves her. Strongly and unconditionally. This is true to an overwhelming extent. 

But love is not all that there is.

And this is something Tiki need not know.

Marth turned his face downwards, at Tiki. He does not correct the old woman, and as his hand lands comfortingly over the little manakete’s green head, butting into his palm, the Hero-King says his words loud enough for Tiki to hear.

Loud enough, kind enough to ring loud and clear to the impressionable ears of a child. The most important one to ever exist beneath the skies crafted into being by their pantheon.

“Thank you. I love her as both a daughter and a sister, so those words honor me more than I can say.” 


End file.
